Leaving home
by planet p
Summary: AU; a sequel to Home. Jarod returns to his family.
1. Chapter 1

**Leaving home **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

Ethan watched Lyle with a frown. The boy seemed to sleep better in the car than in any motel.

He closed his eyes and prepared himself for the three hour wait until the sun came up.

---/---

Jarod flipped his cell phone open. "Jarod," he answered. Recognition shone in his brown eyes.

Dr. Kessler explained that he had been looking into this Bobby thing.

Jarod laughed and thanked him, but he didn't need to do that.

"I've time enough," he reminded Jarod. He was retired. Needless to say, he'd so far found nothing. He sighed. He told Jarod about what his granddaughter had told him. She'd been appalled.

---/---

Jarod sighed. He told Ethan that Dr. Kessler had called him, and he told him about what had happened.

Callie was 22 and had shown no brain activity for two years. She was awake now, but she'd been in a coma when she'd been raped.

Jarod sighed and told Ethan that he was going to call Charles to inform him that they were alive and would be dropping by soon.

Ethan left the room.

---/---

"Why'd you rape that girl?"

Lyle placed the book he had been reading in his lap, his legs crossed, and stared at Ethan blankly.

Ethan glowered.

"She was pretty," Lyle said.

Ethan launched at him and threw him back on the bed. "If I hear about any more shit, I won't be turning you into the police!" he growled, his eyes dark with anger. "Do you understand?"

Lyle closed his mouth. He nodded. He understood.

Ethan released his tee shirt and stalked from the room.

---/---

"The Manager reckons he's gonna give you your job back."

Callie turned and looked into her friend's face.

"That boy, Lyle, the Manager gave him your register when you… you know…"

The two girls were silent for some moments, walking along a section of cracked pavement. When Callie had woken up and the doctors had said it was okay for her to go home, Theresa had decided to take her for a walk around town.

Callie laughed. "That's good!" she said about what was written on the back of the sign announcing the town of Misery to drivers. "Hey, who wrote that?"

Theresa eyed her friend, her arm looped through the other girl's. "You did," she said.

Callie laughed hysterically. She had too. It was funny because her father was a policeman. "I'm going swimming tomorrow," she said to her friend.

Theresa watched her.

"Mom's gonna take me to the pool in Addison."

Addison was a 50 minute drive from Misery. Callie had lived in a hospital ward in Addison for two years.

Theresa hugged her. Callie stared off into space. She was getting her job back because Lyle didn't need it anymore.

---/---

Ethan had regained his appetite for the most part. Across from him, Jarod was busy eating his breakfast.

Lyle sat by the window, beside Jarod. Ethan noted that he wasn't eating. He had put the book away. His coffee had gone cool waiting for him to drink it.

A truck was being filled at a pump outside the window. Three other cars were also being filled.

---/---

They drove for the most part of the day. Lyle sat on the back seat and read his book and slept and read.

---/---

Jarod had taken out a room for the night. Ethan slept in a room with two single beds; he shared with Lyle. He had left Jarod watching late night television.

Ethan peered into the dark. He relaxed when he noted that Lyle was asleep, and made his way to his own bed. He paused. His eyes fell on Lyle's backpack with the Inca pattern and his supermarket nametag pinned to the front.

Ethan sat down on his mattress and squeezed the snap clip and flipped the backpack open. He flicked through the boy's wallet. A proof of age card informed that he was recently turned 21. His full name was Lyle Hamilton. No middle name was listed. Ethan assumed that he had never been given one. His debit card neither listed a middle name. Aside from three coins, he had no other money in his wallet.

Ethan pulled out the book he had been reading all week. It was a book on politics and protest movements. There was a dictionary that might have been used for spell-checking.

The asthma puffer was out-of-date. Ethan thought about throwing it out. He stuffed it back in the backpack.

The only other item was an exercise book. Ethan opened to the first page and squinted down at the page.

_Words To Remember_, was scrawled at the top of the page. A list of dates and words and definitions followed this. Ethan leafed through the pages to the most recent entry.

_rape – forced sexual intercourse + sexual intercourse without consent_

Ethan shut the book.

---/---

Callie sat with her legs crossed on her bedroom floor, bent over a Ouija board. She pushed an upside down glass around the board. _D-E-A-R-L-Y-L-E_, she spelt out. _W-H-Y-D-I-D-Y-O-U-R-U-N-A-W-A-Y._ She paused, before continuing. _I-W-O-U-L-D-N-T-H-A-V-E-T-O-L-D._

She waited, but she felt no tug on her finger resting lightly on the glass.

She wanted to tell Theresa, but she knew Theresa would think her mad if she did. How could she possibly explain to Theresa that she had asked Lyle to do that? She hadn't wanted to die without ever having had sex, and she had thought that there might be a chance that she got pregnant and then her parents wouldn't be so sad when she died because they would have a grandchild to love. She hadn't told Lyle this last part however.

She placed a hand on her stomach and smiled inside. She hadn't died, and she was pregnant. She was going to tell Theresa – soon – but not now.

She spelt out _goodnight_ and _thanks_ and tucked the Ouija board away under her bed. Then she climbed into bed and closed her eyes.

* * *

**Thanks for reading. Comments?**


	2. Chapter 2

Added Disclaimer: I don't own _Who Knew_ by Pink.

* * *

Ethan wiped a hand down his cheek. He was thankful the dreams had stayed away. He had managed to sleep for about two hours.

He walked to Lyle's bed and frowned at the earphones. He picked up the mp3 player and found that it was playing a song called _Baroque No. 19_. Clearly, Lyle was asleep. Ethan switched the mp3 player off and put it back down.

---/---

They had a two hour drive until they arrived at the point Charles had specified over the phone. Ethan was apprehensive about his father meeting Lyle, and he was apprehensive that Lyle was not to be trusted. He could not trust the boy.

Lyle slept most of the way. Jarod drove. Ethan had offered, but not driving made Jarod irritable.

As it turned out, Charles had chosen to meet at Starbucks. Ethan felt, as he stepped out of the car, that this might have been a wise choice. Charles could not very well shoot Lyle in public.

---/---

Charles sat tucked away into a corner at a small table. Emily had accompanied him. Ethan felt suddenly ill.

Jarod took a walk to the table, leaving Ethan to decide between staying with the boy or following his half brother.

Lyle had stopped at the counter to order coffees.

Ethan made a split second decision to stay with the boy.

Lyle hummed something.

Ethan was glad. He didn't think it would be a good idea to sing it out loud. He was glad, too, that Charles and Emily could not see very much of the counter from where they sat. They would just assume Jarod had delegated him to ordering coffees and he had begrudgingly complied.

Their order had been taken, and now they were waiting for their coffees to be made so they could take them over to the table.

"I took your words and I believed in everything you said to me. Yeah, huh, that's right!"

Ethan glanced at Lyle and winced.

Lyle digressed to humming once more and Ethan almost sighed.

A girl brought their coffees to the counter beside which sugar and spoons and napkins and things could be obtained.

Ethan took Jarod's and his own coffees and left Lyle to carry his.

---/---

"I wondered what was missing," Charles said in an attempt at humour. His eyes fell on Lyle and all humour fell away.

Ethan placed the coffees down at the table and Lyle placed his coffee down beside Ethan's. "Hi," he said, and turned away quickly to find himself a chair to squeeze in somewhere. "I'm Lyle," he introduced himself, extending a hand.

Charles vacated his hands to his mug as an excuse not to shake the boy's hand.

Emily actually stood to shake Lyle's hand, and smiled. "My dad, Charles," Emily told him, "and I'm Emily."

"Pleased to meet you, sir," Lyle said to Charles and nodded. He smiled. "Emily."

Emily smoothed the back of her skirt and took her seat again.

Lyle sat down.

---/---

Jarod got to his feet and Charles did the same. The pair took a walk to talk in private. That left Emily, Ethan and Lyle at the table.

---/---

Callie mostly sat on the edge of the pool and kicked her legs about. She was going to get a book on near death experiences, she decided, either that or out of body experiences, astral travel, whatever they were calling it.

She thought that perhaps all the time she had thought she was going to die, she was really going to wake up, but she couldn't be sure. She had been as good as brain dead for two years.

She kicked her feet and calves in the water and contemplated ringing one of those telephone psychics, but she didn't think that the ones who really had abilities advertised them. She didn't know so much, but she thought that if it was her who could see spirits or ghosts or souls, that she might think it cool. But every minute of every day, and with no control over it, she thought that that would take some of the glamour right there.

It was funny, because she'd never believed in psychics before, but that was before. With a sigh, she heaved her butt up off the smooth tile edging, and walked around the pool edge to the steps and walked down into the water.

She couldn't tell anyone, but she missed Lyle. He had been her friend for a year and a month.

She remembered why he'd first come to the hospital. He was asthmatic and needed a puffer, so he needed a doctor to prescribe him one. He'd walked right into her and knocked her flat over.

She was as stunned as he was. Everyone had been ignoring her. Well, not ignoring her, they just couldn't _see_ her. She had been waiting for her parents to visit, but they were late. For one moment, she had thought that she really had woken up, and that she had been wandering around mistakenly thinking she was a spirit. But it soon dawned on her, that, no, she hadn't woken up, this boy was just different. He saw spirits.

After that, she started to become aware of other presences herself. Still, none of them openly confronted her. She supposed they were the dead and thought themselves some kind of VIPs compared to herself.

She'd hid, and watched him talking to one of these VIP spirits once. She remembered that she had been able to see this one spirit, just as if he were a real live person, and she'd wondered if spirits could actually see or even communicate with each other without a go-between, or perhaps they just needed to open their minds to the possibility and stop being so snob-nosed.

The water felt cool and ethereal as it pressed in against her skin as she moved out into the depths of the pool. She closed her yellow-grey eyes.

---/---

"You okay?" she asked.

Lyle closed his mouth and nodded. He was stood leant against the wall as patients and staff and visitors alike moved past without pause.

Callie looked at him, really looked at him. "You look pale. You've got a freckle on your nose when you're pale." She started to count them.

He looked away.

She didn't even think about it. She leant in closer. His hair smelt nice, like coconut. It was likely nothing more than her own imagination.

She thought about that first time she'd seen him and how she'd decided then that she would never like him. He had been stocking some shelf.

His hair looked nice, too. It was dark brown. Her own hair was black.

She considered his overlarge eyes. They were great blue saucers, and filled with the shine of water, the way children rubbed their eyes too much when they were tired, or the sting of antiseptic vaporising in the air, or too much heat and too much dust in the air. They were nothing like her own grey eyes that might change from black to brown to yellow. She decided that she liked them.

---/---

The air felt strange and pleasant on her skin. It was like that every time she thought of him.

---/---

Charles returned, Jarod behind him, and Emily stood to leave. Ethan got to his feet and glanced across at Lyle who had picked up two of the empty mugs and saucers and marched away to return them to the counter. Ethan decided to help out so that Lyle didn't have to come back twice, and Emily took her own mug. In the back of his mind, Ethan wondered if this was not a play to impress Emily, and it made him angry.

Charles had set up base in a semi-industrial park in a small factory with the same metal on the outside walls as roofing.

Charles took Margaret aside whilst Jarod introduced Lyle to Zoe, Harmony and Mo, his clone. Mo frowned but it all remained inside.

Ethan noted Margaret's hand go to her husband's arm. She led him out of the room. Margaret was angry. Ethan wasn't sure what he felt. Did he hope that Charles was able to talk her down? Or did he hope Margaret told the boy that he was not welcome here?

Zoe shot Jarod a look out of the corner of her eye. What was going on?

Harmony, who might have been Margaret's own age, took Lyle's hands in her own for some moments.

Lyle smiled uncertainly.

Though nothing had been said to the effect, Ethan had the impression that Harmony had been damaged. He suspected that it was less physical than psychological. Harmony was a friend of Margaret's. She could not remember her former life, and there was little Margaret could tell her. Margaret had looked after her for many years. In any case, Harmony was friendly enough.

Margaret charged out of what might have been an office. Charles stood in the door, his stance clearly angry, but his expression was unreadable.

Jarod glanced across at his mother and the two shared a look. Ethan suspected that that was what stopped her. Still, she refused to come down from openly hostile.

Jarod introduced Margaret to Lyle and the glare on the woman could have killed a person.

Lyle put on a brave face and slapped a smile on his face and shook her hand, but Ethan was not fooled. He noticed the way Lyle's hand trembled.

Margaret excused herself coldly and stalked away to assist Emily and Harmony with the lunch-making. Zoe gingerly followed her. Ethan noted that she looked worse than the last time he had seen her.

Mo looked at his father, still standing in the doorway to that once-office.

Jarod strode across the room to talk with Charles himself. He pulled the door shut after him, sending a clear message that conversation crashers were not wanted.

"Can you tell me where the bathroom is?" Lyle asked suddenly.

"I'll show you," Mo said.

Ethan followed. This was his first visit and he had about as much idea where the bathroom was located as Lyle had.

"Thanks," Lyle said to Mo at the door.

Mo nodded and strolled off, vaguely interested in this lunch-making.

Lyle shut the dark yellow door behind him.

Ethan waited outside the door. He didn't need to use the bathroom. He supposed that he was being paranoid but he would give it a few moments, just to be sure Lyle wasn't ringing anyone in there on the cell phone Ethan had seen on him earlier.

Ethan stepped away from the door at the sound of someone being sick, but felt oddly pleased. He thought briefly that the boy was shaping up to be a lousy operative, if that's what he was.

Ethan left in the direction of the small living quarters toward the back of the building. He wondered if he had not been wrong about the factory thing. The building might have been a workshop. It was hard to tell as the signage had been taken down.

---/---

It was late when Ethan woke. He couldn't remember having dreamt and he felt okay, he just couldn't sleep anymore.

He slipped his legs off the mattress and decided to take a walk.

He had just walked out into what might have been the workshop floor, the room he had first come into upon entering the building, and noted a strip of light spread out like molecule-thin icing from under a door. The light was on in the bathroom.

He walked swiftly to the door and pulled it open.

Lyle glanced up at him from where he sat in the corner. "Want one?" he said of the box of chocolates he was eating.

Ethan frowned. He shut the door behind him. The bathroom was small and grubby. He walked to the far end of the room and sat down beside Lyle.

Lyle offered him a chocolate from the box he was holding, and began explaining what each chocolate was. "I like the coconut ones," Lyle said.

Ethan looked into his face and then peered down at the various chocolates. He took one of the coconut ones.

"They're real nice," Lyle told him.

Ethan realised then that whatever else Lyle was, he was just a kid really. He almost felt bad for him.

* * *

**Leaving home **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: Some text is repeated from other stories, though it originally came from this story. Please don't report!

* * *

_The woman's dark grey eyes clamped onto his so that it would have been painful to look away. Ethan hadn't seen her come in. He could hear Raines behind him. Ethan didn't take his eyes from the woman._

_She was slim and all sharp edges and prominent bones, in her wrists, her cheeks. Her face was angular and handsome in a manly way. Her eyes looked like dead eyes. As numb as they were, he felt their pull. _Do not look away_, those eyes told him._

_Raines turned abruptly._

_The woman did not take her eyes from Ethan for some moments, and then her eyes snapped to Raines's. It was a deliberate act. She had not overlooked Raines, she had deliberately dismissed him._

_"Will you be much longer?" she asked lightly, her voice bland, lacking character, but manly in the way that it was not womanly. "I've a booking."_

_Raines moved up to Ethan's side. "Not at all," he breathed._

_Ethan frowned at his tone of voice. His eyes shifted from the woman's face for the first time since she had appeared before him and he leant forward to try to get a look at Raines._

_The woman's eyes flashed and her mouth twitched into something displaying her pleasure at hearing this._

_Ethan was glad she wasn't smiling at him like that._

_"I will be outside," she said, reminding Raines that she was waiting. Her gaze swept across Ethan's as she turned and Ethan was relieved when the door shut behind her._

_Raines spun about swiftly. His eyes looked odd. "You are not to listen to, converse with, or approach that woman," he said in a voice that left no room for disobedience. "Forget that you saw her. She is no one. She no longer exists for you." His tone lost something. "You will not look at her as we leave."_

_He collected his things from a table behind Ethan and the two walked to the door._

_"Ethan, isn't it?" the woman chimed as they stepped out of the lab, her eyes seeking his._

_Raines grabbed her wrist._

_Ethan stopped short of walking into him._

_A spasm of annoyance flashed across the woman's grey face._

_"You do not speak to him!" Raines told her in a low growl._

_The woman met his gaze and she fixed the appropriate amount of alarm to her face. "No," she said in an effort at clear agreement, a little of the sing-song slackened from her voice._

_Raines threw her wrist back at her._

_The woman smiled briefly, and then frowned, rubbing her white wrist that was rapidly turning red._

_"With me!" Raines barked._

_Ethan hurried after him._

---/---

Ethan woke with a start. His eyes hurt. He pushed himself into a sitting position and rubbed his temples. He wondered who the woman was, and why Raines hadn't simply hypnotised him to forget her or something. He winced and frowned. His head hurt. Raines wanted him aware of the woman for some reason, but he clearly didn't want any association there between.

Ethan dropped his hands from the sides of his head. He'd seen Raines angry plenty of times, but he hadn't been angry with the woman, he'd been plain vicious. He rubbed his face. He supposed if it was just now that he was remembering this, then it must have worked.

He tried to place the woman's age, but although she hadn't looked old, neither had she looked young, except that she had to have been.

---/---

_"Give me your hands."_

_Ethan made a face._

_The man nodded. "Mmm. I'll read your fortune."_

_Ethan very much doubted this. He made sure to fix his face with the proper scepticism, and held out his right hand._

_The man took his hand and peered down at his palm. There was no question of _Are you right- handed, then?

_Ethan noted the wooden beads he wore on his right wrist._

_"They're cool, huh?"_

_Ethan frowned._

_The man lifted his gaze to meet Ethan's. He shot a glance at the beads._

_Ethan shrugged. "They're okay," he said._

_"They're for protection," the man explained._

_Ethan wondered if he had taken drugs. His eyes were too big. "What do they protect you against?"_

_"Bad spirits."_

_Ethan grinned._

_The man looked at him. "You ever had bourbon? It's awful. Don't."_

_Ethan snorted. He recovered and said, "You're the psychic. Shouldn't you know the answer to that without having to ask?"_

_The man smiled. "That's the Coca-Cola version. Too much sugar. Bad for your complexion."_

_Ethan made a face. "Is there anything you can tell me?"_

_The man patted his nose. "She's not your type, kid."_

_The man let go of his hands and Ethan took them back. He didn't believe the man and he didn't really think he was psychic. He hoped Raines would hurry up and come so he would scare the man away._

---/---

Ethan felt vaguely uncomfortable at the thought of his sociopath half brother touching him, and even more uncomfortable that he had let him.

He shook the thought and stood.

---/---

_The man stopped at the door on his way out of the ward and turned. "Be careful, little boy. Miss Monstery likes little boys. Look into her eyes and she has your soul."_

---/---

Margaret did not speak at breakfast. In fact, she walked out of the kitchen after ten minutes of Lyle being in the same room. Charles was silent.

Jarod spoke unimportantly to Charles of sport.

Ethan could tell by the way she didn't look anyone in the face that the whole thing made Harmony uncomfortable.

Emily had gotten up to make coffee.

Zoe was sleeping in. She was mostly tired these days, and the drugs didn't help.

Lyle stared at nothing, his eyes sleepy and swimming.

Ethan realised that Mo was missing from the table along with Margaret. He supposed he was sleeping in, same as Zoe, though the reason was likely less to do with sickness than alcohol.

---/---

Ethan and Mo took Lyle to the cinema to give Margaret some time without him. Harmony and Emily accompanied them.

They had popcorn and soda, and Lyle laughed too much and had to put a hand over his mouth.

Later, when they were sitting around after the movie, Mo decided to waste some coins on the machines and managed to make the mechanical arm pick up a stuffed something after about the eleventh game. Lyle laughed at that, too. Mo thrust the toy at him.

Lyle stared at the lump of polyester stuffed thing and smiled.

Mo met his gaze with great difficulty.

Lyle beamed. "Thanks."

Mo looked away.

---/---

They ate an early lunch at McDonald's and Emily dragged them into a bookstore she had seen earlier when they had been driving around.

Emily and Harmony hovered around the romance section and Emily covered her face with her hands when she noticed that they had three of her novels and every one of Harmony's. Harmony rubbed her back consolingly, although she wasn't really sure what was wrong.

Lyle wandered off to find the children's section and Ethan followed, Mo trailing after him.

Lyle sat down on the carpet with several picture books to look through them and crossed his legs.

Mo shot Ethan a look.

Ethan pretended he hadn't seen.

Lyle seemed to decide on a book about a kangaroo and leapt to his feet. He returned all of the books to their proper places and strode to the counter. Evidently he intended to buy the book.

Again, Ethan and Mo followed.

The woman at the counter watched Lyle for a moment as she stowed the book in a paper bag and folded the open end over and fixed it with a length of tape bearing the stores' name and motto.

Emily bought herself a novel of paranormal. Out on the pavement, she grinned and leant into Ethan's ear to ask him quietly what Lyle had bought. Ethan told her that it was a picture book.

They returned to McDonald's for a coffee.

---/---

Jarod left the next day. He took no one with him.

**

* * *

**

**Leaving home **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


	4. Chapter 4

Charles warned Ethan that he should take Lyle out for the day. Ethan frowned in annoyance, but he did all the same.

He drove around for some time, and then he pulled the car up in front of a real estate agency. Sometimes it calmed him thinking about all of those properties and prices and the housing market and knowing that it was all pointless, it meant nothing to him, he wasn't looking to buy and he wasn't looking to lease or rent. Sometimes it helped to fill his head up with pointless things.

It might have been half an hour, but he became aware that Lyle was no longer with him. He could not remember if they had crossed the road together.

The car was parked where he had left it in front of a cemetery. He walked to the other side of the road and spotted Lyle on the other side of the cemetery gates.

With a vague feeling of foreboding, he strolled briskly under the gates. When he came to Lyle he was reading names on a wall. Lyle touched each of the letters carved into the stone, and read out the names aloud that were unfamiliar to him, testing them out for sound. Ethan supposed he hadn't heard him approach.

Lyle turned abruptly and his eyes landed on Ethan.

"I'm going for a coffee," Ethan said.

---/---

Zoe was admitted to a private clinic two days later. Charles tried unsuccessfully to contact Jarod on his cell phone.

Charles largely avoided visiting Zoe. Ethan had a fair idea after the reason for this, but he knew too that avoidance did not stop from feeling it. Margaret kept Harmony away as the prospect of Zoe's impending demise distressed her greatly. For some reason Mo was more distressed than Harmony, though he and Zoe had never been a fan of the other.

Emily stayed for hours and held Zoe's hand as she slept. She walked over there in the early morning not-yet light in her red padded coat with her arms folded tightly over her chest.

Ethan drove around at eleven with Lyle and took Emily out for a coffee. Lyle stayed in the car in an ill temperament as Ethan went inside to bring Emily out to the car. His glumness eased as they drove out of the small parking area and pulled away from the clinic. Emily, in contrast, grew silent and staring.

Zoe was dying, and eventually she would die.

---/---

It was twelve days since Zoe had been admitted and Jarod was still out of contact. The morning rung with coolness, though it was well and truly summer. Ethan stood outside the bathroom, his arms crossed, whilst Mo was throwing up. He had drunken too much alcohol.

Ethan was somehow relieved by the retching sound, though not pleased. Alcoholics were not sick, they just quietly drunk themselves into an alcoholic coma and died. So Ethan was relieved that the excess of alcohol could make Mo sick.

After a good five minutes of listening to that, Ethan decided that he needed to get out. He was not a good comforter.

Emily hurried over when she saw him, but he did not say anything, and when she heard the sounds of Mo being sick, she rushed to the door and slipped inside. Ethan thought vaguely that Emily possessed the correct amount of what he did not, and that she might someday make a fair mother.

He got in the car and spent most of the morning driving around town. Sometime later, he found himself, quite inexplicably, parked outside the clinic.

He noted the familiar vehicle. Charles must have driven Emily in to see Zoe, or perhaps he had come to see her also.

Charles stood around in the narrow passage outside Zoe's room. The halls were all narrow and high affairs, and the walls cracked underneath the stained wallpaper.

When Charles saw Ethan approach, as though he had materialised out of thin air, he rapped crisply on the door and Emily came out.

The three sat around a poky table and Charles explained over his coffee that Zoe was going to die. Ethan had, of course, known this all along, from the moment Zoe had been admitted, perhaps farther back than that even.

Emily's eyes filled with a horrible shine but she forced herself to be brave and not to cry in front of her father.

Ethan felt suddenly numb, and strangely he thought that he was angry and the numbness was simply a mechanism to placate. He was angry because Charles was Emily's father and Emily felt it necessary to disguise her feelings in front of him, to push it all down as though out of a need not to trouble, as though she saw herself as somehow bothersome, as her feelings and need for comfort as bothersome.

But all that did nothing to anger Ethan as much as Charles himself, who ignored all this, who pretended as though he could not see or feel that his daughter was not okay, as though he thought he was doing the right thing by sparing her whatever it was he thought she would be treated were her feelings to overflow and spill out of that little place she had driven them inside, splashing and lapping noisily.

Ethan stood from his seat and walked from Starbucks. He admitted that he was lousy at comforting, that the whole idea induced an instant distance in him. But running away was not the same as ignoring the reality. Anyway, he had left.

He found himself, once again, standing in front of the clinic. He gazed at it for some moments, in all its sinister splendor, and realised that it unsettled him.

The hall to Zoe's room was empty as he approached in a solid march. He supposed he should say something, perhaps wish her all the best in whatever future awaited her. It was with these troubling thoughts that he almost missed the strange pulsing writhing light coming from around the door.

---/---

It was an overcast day, and the world was strangely illuminated by the dull light falling/ shooting to earth, still the hall was shuttered in a thickening swarthy gloom in the absence of daylight. There were no windows in this hall.

The strange light spilled across the door frame. The light did not behave the way light was wont. Now, naturally, a light that bright would dispel along a gradient, but the glow illuminating the hall was much less intense than this brightening/darkening light.

The still air was at once unmoving and prickly on Ethan's skin. Ethan was struck with a vague notion of witchcraft, of dark magic; which was, of course, entirely absurd.

His slowed his pace as he neared closer the door, nonetheless, and coming upon the open door, peered into the room.

He sucked in a breath.

The light shuddered in its centre and retracted. The room was suddenly, almost blindingly, darker.

The thing spun abruptly, its movements disjointed, and wiped a trail of blood from its nose away with a shaking hand.

Ethan didn't move.

The thing eyed him with bone white irises, rimmed by a thick band of dark grey, and in the right eye, a thin ring of red ran inside the dark grey.

Ethan watched it as it moved to the door and out into the hall. Though it recalled the human form and was dressed expensively, it didn't move the way a human did.

Ethan's eyes darted to Zoe. He saw her chest slowly rise and slowly fall. His mind was unclear and sluggish. He pushed the strangeness away and found himself in the hall.

The hall was silent in strange contrast to his racing heart. Ethan squinted into the dimness but saw only emptiness. He blinked. His eyes dropped to the floor in search of the sound. There in front of him was a single drop of dark blood.

His head shot up and he stared at the bare ceiling. The paint was flaking somewhat but the ceiling was as empty as the hall.

He whipped around. The thing peered at him, unmoving. Its eyes had returned to blue, and the whites were stained red and clashed horribly.

Ethan did not take his eyes from it, and a slow realisation dawned on him. The facial structure, the arrangement of features: this was Lyle, his mad half brother.

He backed into the wall in shock. By the time he had gathered himself and returned to his senses, he was alone once again. The stillness pounded in his head and the world lilted uncertainly. He thought irrationally of aliens.

---/---

Charles strode out around the corner, Emily at his side, and the two of them filled the small hall, their voices loud.

Ethan stood hurriedly from the wall. He made no apologies but when Charles's eyes met his, he thought Charles understood why he was there. Of course, Charles understood nothing.

"I'm hungry."

The hall was deathly still for one long moment.

Zoe blinked. She dropped her shoulders.

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**Leaving home **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: Some text is repeated from other stories, though it originally came from this story! Please don't report!

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Ethan woke in the night. He smelt the lavender in her hair before he saw her.

Emily slept quietly beside him.

He closed his eyes and was lost again to sleep.

---/---

_The little girl was four. She wore a badge pinned to her woollen pullover with the Inca pattern. It read: _I love Nebraska_. Her mummy had given it to her, and before that, her daddy had given it to her mummy. Her mummy had given him her star pin._

_Sydney__ ogled nothing. It was a habit of his._

_Her daddy didn't speak as much anymore._

_Sydney__ was always teasing her with his rude eyes. She had always got annoyed when her daddy had talked and talked, but now he hardly talked at all and that annoyed her. She had to make her mind up._

_Her daddy made peanut butter sandwiches for her, but it was his birthday, and it wasn't every day they had peanut butter._

_She suspected that the only reason he ate anything at all was to please her._

_After she'd finished her second sandwich, her daddy took her into the facility where she had lessons normally, but it was past lesson-time._

_He had to work, he said, and did she want anything from the machine. Yes, the one with the drinks._

_She nodded. She did._

_He bought her a Coca-Cola. He never let her have Coca-Cola before. She knew she should have been glad, but somehow she didn't think she wanted a drink anymore, except that it was in her hands, and Sydney was excited. Stupid Sydney was always excited! He didn't understand anything in that stuffed head of his!_

_Her daddy picked her up. He put her back down._

_You don't use those legs and they'll fall off, her daddy joked._

_It didn't sound like a joke to her._

_Her daddy made EPs. She liked her daddy's EPs. She watched them when she had lessons with the other children. EPs stood for Educational Programming, her daddy had told her once._

_She sat with her daddy in his office and her daddy typed on the computer the people he worked for had given him._

_She wanted to be that good at typing one day, she decided, and poked her tongue out at Sydney because he laughed._

_EPs were very important, she told Sydney silently, and she was proud of her daddy because even if he wasn't the goodest at reading, he was good at making EPs. Didn't he know anything? That was why they had given her mummy to her daddy._

_She wished her daddy would touch her. He had always touched her before. She liked when he held her hand, or when he rested his head against hers and she tried to guess what he was thinking of._

_She hid her can of Coca-Cola because she was mad at it, and she didn't want to drink it, but if she just kept looking at it and holding it, she would want to drink it. She was already thirsty._

_Two hours later, her daddy took her for another drink. "Do you want a hot drink?"_

_She nodded._

_The coffee machine was further than the machine with the cold cans. He got a black coffee and a hot chocolate. Her mummy always had black coffee. The hot chocolate was hers. They stood in front of the coffee machine and she blew on her hot chocolate so it could cool before she walked with it because if she spilled it on her hands she would scold them._

_She looked up from her drink. Her daddy never had sugar in his coffee. Her mummy had said sugar stopped it from being yuck. Coffee could be bitter without sugar. "You don't have sugar, daddy."_

_A man walked around a corner ahead. She forgot about yucky coffee. She glared. She didn't like the man._

_The man looked at her. He looked at her daddy. "Cute tot," he said, strolling over._

_Her daddy looked at him._

_The man gave her a smile as he passed. "You two have fun," he said._

_Her daddy said nothing, and when the man was gone, they walked back to her daddy's office._

_Sydney__ glared at her for leaving him. He glared at her hot chocolate too._

_They stayed another hour and left. Her daddy read Sydney and her one of her picture books for bedtime. She sat in his lap and Sydney in her lap and they read the book together and she imitated Sydney's accent._

_They lay down and she fell asleep, thinking about koalas._

---/---

Ethan woke momentarily. The sun wasn't yet above the horizon. He thought of kissing Poni, of being close to her, of holding her.

---/---

_The little girl was older. She was sitting. A red-headed woman was sitting with her. The woman was a nurse. The little girl was fourteen, not a little girl anymore, though she looked older, more mature, except for her teeth, her teeth were still a fourteen-year-old's teeth._

_The girl sat cross-legged. She was telling a story. The story was about a young wizard who had found a dying lizard and restored it to life, and by doing so created a lizard woman. The woman was actually a werelizard, a human with the ability to turn into a lizard, but the woman had been turned permanently into a lizard by a magic spell that would have killed her had the young wizard not intervened._

_The girl smiled and continued her tale._

_"But being so young, the young wizard's magic was also young, and he could not fully restore the woman, but for three hours each day, and then she would become lizard woman again._

_"The wizard and the lizard woman travelled very far and had many adventures, until one day the wizard realised that he had fallen in love with the lizard woman. The same day, the pair came across a circus._

_"The wizard had never been to a circus before, and so the two young people paid for their tickets and were admitted. They enjoyed the circus very much, but as they were leaving, the young man suddenly stopped. He turned to the woman, and told her that they would be returning later._

_"It was dark when they set out to the circus again, and the big-top and tent had been packed down. The wizard, however, was determined, and decided to take a look around the cages, and soon found out that the circus was a magical circus of werethings. A lion yawned in its cage, but when the moon struck on its body it began to transform into human form. The moon slipped into the clouds again, and the lion man finished his yawn as a lion again._

_"The young wizard was upset when he saw this and turned and told the lizard woman exactly that in a loud whisper, and the lizard woman was upset too. But then she ran away._

_"The young wizard ran after her but she was faster and outran him. He looked for her everywhere, but after a while he grew to feeling useless and returned to the circus._

_"The ringmaster was the magician who had turned all of these animals into humans. Some were successful and were able to properly transform into humans, others were caught between animal and human at the moon's whim. The young wizard soon learned that the magician was using these humans as spies, and it was at the same time that he realized that the young woman that he loved was also that, or had once been the same. She was not a woman at all, but a lizard, but she had ran away, and something happened to undo the magic spell and she began to change back into a lizard, though she was also dying – and that was when he had found her._

_"The wizard turned away from his discovery and ran and ran, looking for the woman he loved, though he never did find her._

_"Taken with grief, he threw himself down, and cried into his knees, and soon tears were falling onto his feet and turning them into roots, which dug down into the ground, and to this day he remains in that same place, as old as a tree can be."_

_The nurse clapped loudly. It was a good story. Though she still had one question. She frowned, although she was still smiling. "But what happened to the lizard woman?" she asked. "Did she die? Or did she return to the circus as a spy for the magician?"_

_The girl shook her head._

That was when Ethan woke.

---/---

Ethan watched the wall. That was why Lyle had done that for Zoe, he realised, because she had been there for his daughter when he had hadn't.

He wondered what it meant. What this facility was that his half brother had been working for? What Zoe had been doing there, working for the same facility? If Zoe had been working there at the same time as Lyle? Whether they had known each other? And why the little girl was so scared of Kyle?

He thought back, too, to what Kyle had said to Lyle and the little girl in the corridor, and thought now that there was something to that, something more than he had perceived at the time. The way Kyle had been talking about the two of them as though-

He couldn't get the thought out. He felt sick again.

---/---

He had thought about asking Zoe. She had been the nurse in the dream after all. But then he had changed his mind. He really had to be sure, he decided, whether the nurse really was Zoe. He remembered that someone had said that Zoe had had a twin and that she had died. Whether or not identical, he had no way of knowing; no one had ever told him.

He decided that he would ask Catherine, his mother. She was the only Voice he trusted.

**

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**Leaving home **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

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**What do you think? I had about 1,021 more words after this, but that was about it. Well, there was something else, but I wasn't keen on that edit, really, so I ditched it, pretty much.**

**Thanks for reading.**


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